Best Gay Erotica 2011 (3 page)

 

Sylvan and I sit at our antique Shaker dining room table in the morning eating carefully measured portions of steaming oatmeal with thin slivers of banana out of Jasper Conran Wedgwood bowls. Our laptops are open and we are spending this half hour together over breakfast checking email, blogs and news websites.

“Jay's friend Michael is DJ-ing at Club Ripples. I told Tony and Sam I'd meet them there for shots at eight.”

“Fab. I've got after-work drinks for Sahara at Fubar, but I can catch a cab there by nine.”

“Tony's sis Jessica might be there too.”

“Ugh! Have you seen her latest Facebook picture? Jess should
really slow down on the Botox before she has a total bat face. But maybe she should go back under the knife and do something about that nose.”

“Seriously. I mean, hello! That nose hasn't been in fashion since the late nineties.”

“Doubt it would help that horse face of hers. Or her hyena laugh.”

“I know. And she laughs at the stupidest shit. Things that aren't even funny.”

“She's got the personality of a jellyfish. She's a total coke head too.”

“She's got a killer body though. Great knockers.”

“Fantastic breasts.”

“We should get her over for dinner.”

“Yeah, and her sexy boyfriend Drake.”

We down our cappuccinos and kiss before leaving for work.

 

Sergei and I exchange several messages over the next week. I don't mention seeing him at the fair or that I've been tracking him over cyberspace. I pretend to have stumbled across his profile when searching for a hookup. His messages are clipped erotic half sentences that sear my imagination. We chat tentatively about meeting up, but I don't want to see him anywhere near my life here. I want to give myself to him on some foreign ground, where the echoes of my screams as he devours me can't be heard by anyone familiar. I read another discussion between him and a friend on a social networking site, discovering that he'll be at a leather fair in New York City in three weeks.

The next morning I tell Sylvan that I have to attend a conference for work in New York City.

I enter Sergei's suite at a fashionable downtown hotel. The paint looks fresh on the walls, the air feels carefully circulated and there are sleek modern lines to the decor. Black-and-white framed photographs featuring dramatically lit monuments and statues adorn the walls. He shutters the large window view of placid, gray sky and bulky, concrete buildings by pressing a button. I say that I need to have a piss, at which he nods and says he'll pour us a drink. The black marble stone bathroom has a glass counter and silver washbasin. Numerous small orange bottles filled with pills are carefully lined up on one side. I look at these in wonder and excitement, studying and instantly forgetting the many prescription drug names like a tourist. I hear the thumping introductory beats of some music through the half-closed door. He is waiting, the man I am trembling with need to give myself to. I flush the toilet and quickly turn on and off the tap, making a show to hide the fact that I just wanted a moment alone to savor the anticipation.

The room's lights have been substantially dimmed. His iPod is set on a stylish stereo dock that is glowing blue. A thumping electronic beat rings out through the speakers, and a mournful Central European-sounding female voice begins singing a low-pitched melody. He walks up to me and tilts his head to the side as if sizing me up. I'm frozen in place as he grabs my jaw and forces his mouth onto mine. His kiss is wet and deep and urgent. As he opens his mouth to enclose mine, his body begins to grind against me. I respond and fit myself against him, treasuring the feel of his muscular arm as it encloses me and the gruff scrape of his beard against my smooth face. I'm only aware of the music in my ears and of his touch. He releases me and walks away so quickly I almost fall forward. He changes the song to one with quick drumbeats and an electronic hum. Two women sing
mournfully over each other. He slides out of his clothes, letting them fall to the floor, and steps up to me again, fully naked with his hard cock bobbing up and down. This is a man of such strength, confidence and lusty beauty that I'm completely entranced. I kiss him again and let him undress me, only helping to undo my complex belt buckle when he fumbles with it. I'm ready to be struck down. Fully naked we rub against each other for some time until he wrestles me onto the floor. His rough face slides down my body, digging at the dark alcoves of it with his tongue and gripping my limbs in his strong hands. He directs me onto my front and laps at my ass. In my mind, I whisper for him to fuck me and then I'm shouting it aloud, my voice in combat with the thumping music. He stands and retrieves a condom from the pocket of his crumpled jeans on the carpet.

Painfully I twist my neck around to look up at him. I slam my fists against the floor with my ass still angled up in air. “Fuck me bareback! I want to feel your cock inside me!”

Sergei stares at me with the metallic square wrapper in his hand and his hard cock pointing upward. I shout it again. I beg him to fuck me and shove his skin into my hole.

“I told you in a message I'm HIV positive. It's in my profile: only safe sex.”

I stand and wrap my arms around him hungrily, kissing and groping him. He responds and rubs against me. I take the condom from his hand and throw it to the floor, then pull him on top of me on the bed and lift my legs so they are over his shoulders.

“Fuck me,” I demand.

I look up at him angrily. His eyebrows narrow and he sneers at me in fury. He throws my legs off, stands up and firmly says no. He begins to dress and I begin to cry, first slowly and then with strong heaving sobs. I curl up on top of the crisp bedspread
and hug my knees to my chest. I feel him crawl behind me, enclosing me warmly in his arms, kissing my burning ears and telling me it's going to be all right. We fall asleep in a strange sort of embrace.

 

In the morning I stare at his sleeping naked form. His hideously large skull covered in a thin layer of taut near-transparent skin reveals purple-blue veins. His tattoos look slightly faded, and it's easy to imagine how sickly they will appear once his skin starts to sag and wrinkle. Patches of his skin are blotched red from sleeping on his arm. His mouth hangs slightly open and emits a choking hiss of a snore. Numerous lines have permanently creased the sides of his eyes and his forehead. Small pink pimples dot his shoulders from where he's plucked or shaved the hair. Lube mixed with my anal juices left faint brown stains on his fingers. He is old and ugly and dying. I am disgusted by the sight of him. I want to punish him.

I slip quietly into the marble bathroom. The hard floor freezes my sensitive naked feet. I pick up and examine the numerous small orange medicine bottles. My mirror image appears young, painfully thin, and my skin has a healthy glow under the recessed lighting. The pills make a satisfying clicking sound as I turn them in my hands, studying the complex names printed on the labels. I open them and pour the contents of each one into my hands until I have a large palm full of variously shaped white, cream, yellow and blue pills. These I tip into the toilet bowl. I carefully recap each medicine bottle and put it back in its place on the countertop. Then I have a long piss and flush the toilet. There are some splashes of water on the taps and the glass surface, which I wipe down until they shine, and I'm careful to leave the towels neatly straightened on their racks. I dress and leave before Sergei wakes up.

On the flight back to the West Coast I stare into my glass of champagne, watching the bubbles scream to the surface. The sound is barely audible against the electronic screech of the aircraft sailing through the sky and the boisterous businessmen in the seats nearby who sling back glasses of scotch and tear carnivorously into the prettily arranged beef empanada. I refuse all of the courses offered by the immaculately presented stewardess, and I choose instead to only pick through a fruit salad and make friends with the bottles on the alcohol trolley.

Sinking back into the plush leather seat, I glance out the small oval window at the blue slate of sky hiding the surface of Middle America. It's a comfort that we're traversing the length of the country without even noticing the numerous banal towns and tedious cities scattered over the rural landscape. I imagine that this plane is a sort of escape pod that has delivered me from the little town where I was born. It still exists down there somewhere, inhabited by my family and childhood friends, who writhe miserably in their provincial lives and are smothered by tedium. My heart actually races when I think how I've escaped what could have been my life. I'm balanced upon the edge of a cliff watching a lava flow engulf a village and its hundreds of screaming inhabitants. I'm in a life raft floating on a treacherous ocean watching a ship in flames collapsing into the roaring water. I've wrestled a tornado that's destroyed everything, and now I'm returning to my enchanted city. This is the only way I know how to survive.

 

I can't afford this first-class flight, but I booked it on my credit card anyway. I'm nearing the limits on several cards and have no idea how I'll pay them off, despite the good salary and generous bonuses I receive. I suspect Sylvan is in similar financial trouble,
but we never discuss money. No one in our group cares about money; we simply expect it to be there. I've worn my new Gucci shirt to meet Sylvan at the airport—although he wasn't certain if he'd have time to make it out to LAX, and I might just see him back at the apartment. That is, unless he got caught up having drinks with colleagues. In which case, I might not see him until the next morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex liked it when Max Weston treated him like shit. The star attackman of the lacrosse team shoved the skinny skater to the ground and straddled his back, squeezing Alex's sides with his knees as the younger boy writhed beneath him. Max pressed Alex's skateboard against the back of his head, pushing his face into damp, cold weeds. Sweaty jocks laughed. One lacrosse player said, “Max, c'mon, get off him, man.”

Max tossed the skateboard aside and released the shaggy-haired skater, unfolding into a long-boned nineteen-year-old boy.

Alex rolled onto his back, grabbed his skateboard and swung it like a bat at Max.

Guys made stupid
ooh
sounds.

Max jumped back grinning, flashing the gap between his two front teeth. “Faggot wants to get tough, huh?” Freckles dotted his high cheekbones. His chestnut hair was buzzed on the sides, slicked forward on top and spiked up at his forehead.
He snarled through his piggish nose. He looked like an all-American teen from a fifties advertisement for baseball or killing Russians.

Alex stood up. Weed stems and grass leaves flaked from his baggy clothes. He rubbed his nest of dyed black hair, threaded with grass. More grass clung to his pearly face and sharp nose. He held his skateboard like a sword. “Go get syphilis again.”

Max cupped his hands around his mouth, walking backward toward his friends, swaggering. “Faggot, next time you get near my car, I'm going to shove your face in more than just grass.”

Guys laughed. Alex kept the lip of his skateboard aimed at the receding pack of jocks.

Mr. Albrecht, the only cool English teacher at the school, marched up to Max Weston and his gang. “Guys, guys, touching boys means detention. Don't let me fuck up your season.”

Max spat into the grass, barely missing Mr. Albrecht's khaki pants. The athlete and his crowd walked past the short, red-faced teacher, who had thinning hair and big square glasses.